You need:
Outline:
This step-by-step guide was inspired by:
Note: If you have any way of installing directly to the compactflash card (using a IDE-to-CF adapter) then do that, and jump directly to step 6. It will save you a LOT of work.
You can either install SuSE on a spare computer or inside VMWare. I did the latter. You will be compiling the linux kernel later on so you need at least 700MB free disk space while at the same time you do not want exceed the CF capacity.
Chances are that your spare computer or vmware is more powerful than the net4801 so you will want to prepare the system as much as possible before moving it to the net4801.
During installation select "minimal installation" then select the packages:
and any other packages you will need. I selected bind, dhcp-server, radvd, ethereal and some other stuff. Then let YaST sort out the dependencies. Remember to select 3 as the default runlevel - net4801 does not have a graphical console.
Configure the system for how you want it setup, including:
Install, reboot etc.
Start YaST again and let it get the latest patches.
Do any additional configuration, such as NTP server setup, disabling unneeded services, etc.
Add ttyS0 to /etc/securetty
I also recommend adding ssh keys to your root profile now. Verify that they work.
The net4801 can boot via PXE over the network. This is what we are going to do.
On the workstation/server you will need:
On the server: Create a partition (or a sub-fs if you want) and mount it as /export/soekris
On the spare computer/vmware:
/etc/init.d/portmap start mkdir /import/soekris mount <serverip>:/export/soekris /import/soekris
Copy the installation to the NFS drive. On the spare computer/vmware:
cd / tar clSf - . | (cd /import/soekris; tar xpSf -)
The console on the net4801 will be the serial link. Fix /etc/inittab on the NFS copy:
#1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty --noclear tty1 #2:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty2 #3:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty3 #4:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty4 #5:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty5 #6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6 # S0:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L 19200 ttyS0 vt102
By default, grub may hang if nothing is connected to the serial port. Fix /boot/grub/menu.lst on the NFS copy:
hiddenmenu
terminal --timeout=2 serial
title soekris-serial
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 console=ttyS0,19200n81 selinux=0 splash=silent
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd
And remove all other entries.
The fstab must be suitable for a NFS root. On the server, fix the /etc/fstab on the NFS copy.
/dev/root / nfs defaults 1 1 devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0 sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
I highly recommend changing the IP of the spare system now and rebooting it. You will probably need later while the net4801 is up.
You now have a suitable NFS root for the net4801. But we are not done yet. We have to configure PXE and DHCP.
On the server: configure the DHCP server (/etc/dhcp.conf) for your network, and include this entry:
host soekris {
option root-path "/export/soekris";
hardware ethernet <MAC of your soekris eth0 port>;
filename "/tftpboot/pxelinux.0";
fixed-address <the ip-address of your soekris>;
}
You also need to set up the TFTP server. The default installation in SuSE chroots to /tftpboot so all filenames are relative to that. Normally PXE stuff is referred to as /tftpboot/... so I ended up with just making the directory /tftpboot/tftpboot.
You now have to compile a kernel that has the network driver embedded and configured for NFS root. The net4810 has a National Semiconductor network chip. The "natsemi.c" is the proper driver. On the spare computer go to /usr/src/linux and:
make cloneconfig (SuSE specific) make menuconfig (and configure the stuff mentioned above as built-in (not modules)) make make install
Copy the kernel to the server's /tftpboot/tftpboot/vmlinuz-2.6.11.4-21.8-default
Copy /usr/share/syslinux/pxelinux.0 from the spare computer to the /tftpboot/tftpboot/ on the server
Make the directory /tftpboot/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg
In that directory make a file named after the IP-address of the soekris in hex. Eg. 10.0.0.20 = 0A000014 with the following content:
SERIAL 0 19200 0 PROMPT 1 DEFAULT cf TIMEOUT 40 label cf kernel vmlinuz-2.6.11.4-21.8-default append console=ttyS0,19200n81 root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=<ip-address of your server>:/export/soekris ip=dhcp panic=10 ramdisk_size=16384 rw
Note: some guides uses a backslash to separate long lines. It did not work for me.
Connect the null-modem 9-pin female/female cable to the soekris. Start a terminal program and configure it for 19200 8n1. Minicom works fine.
Start tcpdump -n -i eth0 or similar on your server. Chances are that something goes wrong.
If you have already inserted the compactflash card then you will need to press ctrl-P when prompted.
The net4801 will then find your DHCP server, get the fixed ip-address, and be told where to find the boot image. It will then contact your TFTP server and get pxelinux.0. pxelinux.0 will get the /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/0A000014 file, and then fetch /tftpboot/vmlinuz-2.6.11.4-21.8-default. The kernel will boot and mount the NFS root and be up and running. Then go to step 4.
Something went wrong, didn't it?
The net4810 uses a National Semiconductor 1100 chipset. Linux 2.6 has a sc1200 driver which works.
On the net4801:
modprobe sc1200 fdisk /dev/hda Make a single partition covering the whole compact flash card. Do not create a boot partition. Remember to mark the partition bootable. mkfs.ext2 /dev/hda1 mount /dev/hda1 /mnt grub grub> root (hd0,0) grub> setup (hd0) grub> quit
Then copy the NFS root to the compact flash root
cd / tar clSf - . | (cd /mnt; tar xpSf -)
Edit /mnt/etc/fstab to mount the compact flash root
/dev/hda1 / ext2 noatime,acl,user_xattr 1 1
The 'noatime' option is important. You do not want to wear out the compact flash card. You should probably also consider mounter /tmp and /var/tmp as memory filesystems.
none /tmp tmpfs defaults 1 2 none /var/tmp tmpfs defaults 1 2
Edit the INITRD_MODULES line in /etc/sysconfig/kernel:
INITRD_MODULES="sc1200"
Then run 'mkinitrd' (Yes, this will overwrite the current initrd on the NFS root but you are not using it anyway.). Copy the resulting initrd to the compactflash drive.
cp /boot/initrd-2.6.11.4-21.8-default /mnt/boot/
unmount the compactflash drive.
umount /mnt
shutdown -r now
(or simply power cycle the box)
During startup there will be a few complaints about at least 3 network interfaces not being configured. For the patient, you can configure them with YaST. For the impatient, you can create the /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth-* files by hand.
Start yast, go to system, go to runlevels, and disable all the services you do not want. You probably not want hal, dbus, powersaved, portmap, etc. running.
You may also want to tune /var a bit. http://www.xs4all.nl/~vhouten/Soekris.html has a few tricks.
top - 01:12:39 up 2:56, 2 users, load average: 0.02, 0.01, 0.00
Tasks: 32 total, 1 running, 31 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 1.0% us, 0.3% sy, 0.0% ni, 98.7% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 126400k total, 69684k used, 56716k free, 4008k buffers
Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 45944k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
5119 ntp 15 0 2712 2712 1808 S 0.0 2.1 0:00.11 ntpd
7641 root 15 0 7640 2488 2000 S 0.3 2.0 0:00.79 sshd
7679 root 15 0 7640 2484 1996 S 0.0 2.0 0:00.64 sshd
4998 root 15 0 4596 1956 1588 S 0.0 1.5 0:03.62 sshd
7643 root 16 0 3128 1888 1404 S 0.0 1.5 0:00.78 bash
5156 dhcpd 16 0 4220 1876 1204 S 0.0 1.5 0:00.00 dhcpd
7681 root 16 0 3000 1872 1392 S 0.0 1.5 0:00.81 bash
7700 man 16 0 2928 1136 936 S 0.0 0.9 0:00.04 sh
7741 root 15 0 2040 1052 824 R 1.3 0.8 0:01.33 top
7699 man 20 0 2012 1020 764 S 0.0 0.8 0:01.98 man
4996 root 15 0 1852 856 684 S 0.0 0.7 0:00.12 syslog-ng
7705 man 15 0 2096 848 692 S 0.0 0.7 0:00.15 less
5040 daemon 16 0 1684 748 640 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.11 radvd
5127 root 16 0 1736 744 620 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.02 cron
1935 root 11 -4 1468 596 408 S 0.0 0.5 0:01.18 udevd
4995 root 16 0 1600 588 400 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.02 klogd
5159 root 17 0 1468 476 420 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.00 agetty
4973 root 20 0 1496 468 404 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.00 resmgrd
3653 root 17 -2 1456 432 312 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.00 hwscand
1 root 15 0 680 248 216 S 0.0 0.2 0:02.98 init
2 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 ksoftirqd/0
3 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 events/0
4 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.16 khelper
9 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthread
22 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kblockd/0
78 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pdflush
79 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.17 pdflush
81 root 11 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 aio/0
80 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kswapd0
672 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kseriod
2037 root 19 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khpsbpkt
2370 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khubd